whose house are you haunting tonight?
by xshedreamsinredx
Summary: Set after season 2 finale. Damon/Caroline. A man can be happy with any woman as long as he does not love her. May add to it.


A/N: Set after season 2 finale. I don't own Vampire Diaries; if I did I wouldn't allow Julie Plec to screw around with the characters as much as she does. whose house are you haunting tonight?

"_There is something wrong with me."_

-O-

It doesn't matter how they start-

From approaching the Californian border to crossing the interstate highway leading to Nevada

-but this is how they always end up like: frustrated, conflicted and on the opposite sides.

"We missed him by a difference of forty minutes," he hisses, bangs his fist against the steering wheel for no other reason than to express desperation and anger over little brothers who step in to play the martyr on a weekly basis and somehow manage to get lost along the way. "Forty fucking minutes."

"We'll find him," Blondie's voice chime in from his right but it sounds meek as compared to her usual conviction and forced cheerfulness. If he gives it more thought he'd wonder who she is trying to assure: him or herself. "Not today maybe but hopefully tomorrow."

"Of course, we will," he snaps defensively, because this scenario is not at all going down the way it did in his head and he is sorely responsible for his absent brother who most likely is off playing Count Dracula somewhere with the biggest, baddest vampire in the history of fucking forever . "It's not my fault if baby bro has screwed up priorities and chooses to dine in Oregon one minute and Texas the very next."

"Stop being a dick." Caroline sums up -eloquent as ever- and looks at him with eyes so tired for a seventeen year old that he is sure she'll develop frown lines like St-… someone he knows. "We all are trying to cope here; you're not the only one, Damon."

"Oh?" he inquires bitterly, fake-surprised, lips snagged in a mocking frown. "Enlighten me, who exactly constitute 'all'? Elena, who is at the college, moving on with her life, or your favourite busboy who decided to take off the very minute he could without even telling you. But wait; maybe it's your mother who was so relieved to have you out of the way that she eagerly shoved you in my hands?"

He anticipates retaliation, an equally scathing remark to match his own or a series of expletives to escape her mouth. It is strangely disappointing when all he receives is deafening silence which is, somehow, harder to stomach than any of the above. She pursues her lips, returns to watching the landscape blur at the edges through the window and he goes back to the never ending road, thicker-than-water tension and the unsaid 'I didn't mean it.'

-O-

They whistle through anonymous towns, sleep at dodgy, seedy motels with creepy managers who stare at her most often than not and then turn to him with a sly smile on face, a suggestive twinkle in eyes. It makes her shiver he notices with a detached sort of interest which is why he always takes the time to wink back in reply.

"Dibs on the bed," she calls out, as if that makes an actual difference in all the probability.

He shrugs, is already on the bed before she can even get another word out of her mouth. "Haven't you heard sharing is caring?"

He can almost feel the effort it takes for her not to rise to the bait, sees it in the tense line of her back, the finger nails digging in her palm as she clenches and unclenches her fists to maintain her composure.

"I have," she bites out and he thinks he should commend her on self-control. "It's just that I don't particularly believe in exercising that."

"Since when?" he wonders loudly, index finger tapping against chin in a gesture of 'thinking'. "If memory serves, and I bet it does, you were more than eager to share and care back then. What changed?"

To her credit, she doesn't even flinch, looks straight at him with an evenness that looks a tad too smooth to be genuine. "I died. I escaped death on your hands but I still died."

One day, he'll tell her that her execution of nonchalance is quite poorly done, a century or two of practicing in front of the mirror and she'd perfect it.

-O-

The wires that start, loop and end within his heart get tangled sometimes. Most days, Stefan is the culprit but some days, so is she.

She packs her bag, in the middle of the night in a flurry to get away from him while he sits back in the ugly leather armchair, watching impassively as she stuffs in her clothes. To some extent he has been expecting this but her eyes carefully avoid his as she tosses articles here and there fervently and for some reason that is part messed up and part something else that he can longer be bothered to define it burns a little more than necessary.

"I am sorry," she says, while standing in the doorway but she doesn't look that, not one bit.

"Say that again when you actually feel it." He offers simply, getting up to close the door.

He thinks he hates her.

Two days later, she slips into the barstool beside him and orders a drink, talks about things that matter and things that don't in that usual way she does when she is purposefully trying to delay something important.

"I am sorry." She finally relents in to saying when he has foot his bill and is about to leave.

He shrugs, a gesture that can mean anything from disinterest to plain ignorance but she is already in the passenger seat by the time he starts the car and he doesn't throw her out like he once would have, so there is that.

He thinks he _doesn't_. Not that much.

-O-

And just because he thinks it, does not mean that he no longer wants to wrap his hands around her pretty throat and squeeze the life out of her.

They wind up to the south of nowhere when they are supposed to be in Alabama, trailing his brother, saving him from a mass murderer who could put some of his darkest deeds to shame without meaning to.

"You," he grits through his teeth, snatching her up by the wrist to shake her, to shake some sense into her because god, knows she's in strict need of it. "You are so useless; you can't even read a map correctly."

She pulls her arm away, glaring at him momentarily before rubbing at her skin which is red in the shape of his fingers.

"How is it any of my faults?" she inquires acidly, "If you still don't know the roads even after a century and half of existence. What were you doing all this while exactly? God, if Stef-"

"Don't." He warns her, leaning closer to loom over her frame, she takes a step back instinctually, blue eyes wide with fear and all the implications and memories associated with the sudden invasion of personal space.

For two broken heartbeats, he deliberates getting back into the car, driving away, never to look back just to show that he can, but then she's wearing the same yellow dress from _that_ day at the park and her eyes are too blue and she is too young, so he doesn't. He can't bring himself to.

-O-

There is only one thing there is to know about Damon Salvatore and that is: he ruins people. Or so Blondie claims when she is drunk off her ass this one time in this one bar whose name he has long since forgotten.

"You ruined me," she slurs, stumbling over her steps and he has to hold her tight so that she doesn't fall. "You'll do it again."

He swallows the bitter taste that her words leave in his mouth.

"I had dreams, I wanted to live," she cries, growing hysterical by the minute and it's a good thing that he possesses an unflinching quality to listen to Taylor Swift because right now he can't really distinguish between her shrill voice and that of Taylor singing. "I wanted to grow up, get married to Matt and..."

"Honestly?" he snorts, forcing out words that are unapologetic enough to convey nothing but infinite levels of condescension. "Because that sounds like a complete waste of time but I wouldn't put it past you. Even Stefan," yes, he's mentioning his brother's name after trying to avoid it for too long and still not achieving peace of mind. "Had better future goals than you when he was human."

She wrenches herself free from his grip, narrows her glassy blue eyes at him and tries to take a swing at him which in her drunken stupor gets her nowhere except maybe reeling back into him. "Why you son of a b-"

"Frankly, Caroline, I did you a favour there."

"What did you say?" She questions, startled, the pretence edge and incoherence dropped fifty miles back.

"I did you favour there." He repeats, enunciating each word carefully as if talking to a mentally retarded person.

"No," she argues gently shaking her head which by the looks of it happens to be a very bad idea because her balance visibly sways. "You called me Caroline, not Vampire Barbie or Blondie or some other ridiculous name just… Caroline. Plain, old Caroline."

"You were never just Caroline," it's the alcohol in his system speaking. "You were just… you."

He is not sure what he means by that but she looks at him bewildered and she is smiling and she hasn't in the past few days so he guesses he must have said something right.

"Damon," she says, still smiling. "You too are fine just the way you are."

She opens her mouth to speak again, to ruin the moment because she has a knack for doing that, he takes it upon himself to silence her.

-O-

The next morning, they are back again on the road and Caroline has given in to pretending that she doesn't remember anything that happened last night which is absurd because she is nothing but obvious especially when she is trying not to be. She looks outside the window and it's nothing out of ordinary but she can't seem to meet his eyes anymore and every time his fingers brush against hers, she withdraws her hand quickly and he knows what exactly is going on in her mind because there is a lingering memory of warm lips and soft gasps in his too.

Running away from your problems will not make them disappear, he wants to tell her. But he won't. Not today, will save it for tomorrow. Or wait till she figures it out on her own.

**A/N: This was crazy and probably dull but what can I say? I am ridiculously out of practice, I haven't written anything since what feels like forever. Yup, senior year is a bitch and a half to deal with it but do let me know what you think about it. The good, the bad and the in-betweens. Also, sorry to any T- Swift fans I might have offended, I like her music but I just wrote what I thought Damon might have felt. Don't hate on me. Also, I just checked out Honeeym's new Daroline fic 'Venus vs. Mars' and it's insane how gorgeous her writing is. If you have time, do read it. Seriously, she's like the best D/C writer ever. This was meant to have been entered for eena-angel's prompt at Lj comment Ficathon: **_**'Nothing comes out of nothing.'**_** But this ended up being the opposite of the prompt, so I didn't fill it. Btw, I don't think I'll be following TVD this season because Delena will happen and my fragile Stelena shipping heart (Tumblr can make you do crazy things) can't take that. Read and review. Love ya all. **


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